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So many of us toast to the New Year with drink in hand – alcoholic or not.

Here’s a quick primer so you can make some informed choices:

• A standard drink is 1.5 ounces of hard liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or 12 ounces of beer.
• Nutritionally:

1. 12 ounces of beer has 153 calories and 13.9 grams of alcohol
2. 12 ounces of lite beer has 103 calories and 11 grams of alcohol
3. 5 ounces red wine has 125 calories and 15.6 grams of alcohol
4. 5 ounces of white wine has 121 calories and 15.1 grams of alcohol
5. 1 1/2 ounces (a jigger) of 80 proof (40% alcohol) liquor has 97 calories and 14 grams of alcohol

• Alcohol has 7 calories per gram but doesn’t fill you up the way food does, so you can drink a lot and not feel stuffed.
• Alcohol lowers your inhibitions and your resolve not to eat everything at the buffet table often flies right out the window.
• Eating something before drinking can help blunt alcohol’s intoxicating effects.
• Drinking light beer rather than regular saves about 50 calories a bottle.
• Mixed drinks and fancy drinks significantly up the calories.   For instance,

1. A frozen margarita has about 45 calories an ounce
2. A plain martini, no olives or lemon twist, has about 61 calories an ounce
3. An 8-ounce white Russian made with light cream has 715 calories.
4. The alcohol, heavy cream, eggs, and sugar in a cup of eggnog has about 343 calories and 19 grams of fat
5. Mulled wine, a combination of red wine, sugar/honey, spices, orange and lemon peel has about 210 to 300 calories per 5 ounces, depending on how much sweetener is added.

• Watch your mixers — per ounce club soda has no calories, tonic has10, classic coke has 12, Canada Dry ginger ale has 11, orange juice has 15, and cranberry juice has 16.
• And, if you’re toasting to health and happiness in the New Year with champagne – it’s a comparative caloric bargain at about 19 calories an ounce! To your health!

My very best wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year.

After a very successful year, starting in 2011  SocialDieter  will be “wearing” a brand new look and donning a new name — but keeping the same “attitude.” Our new name will be My foodMAPs, a moniker that better represents our approach to healthy eating and weight management.  For a sneak peak at the new look go to www.MyfoodMAPs.com

Please note that even if you are receiving email delivery of SocialDieter you will have to sign-up for email delivery of MyfoodMAPs.

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There is a heck of a lot of snow outside.  I actually can’t open my kitchen door because of a gigantic snowdrift.  Many hours after the snow has deposited a foot and a half of whiteness (without the drifts), the guy who plows my driveway hasn’t been here yet because his truck broke down.

It also happens to be two days after Christmas.  I served lunch to twenty people on Christmas Day.  I have leftovers – lots of them – and most of them are not, by any stretch of the imagination, of the low calorie variety.

Being stuck inside with many leftovers in the fridge and a post-holiday slump leads to almost continuous nibbling and noshing.  What to do?

What To Do As The Caloric Intake Approaches Stratospheric

You can do lots of things, but some of them are just not happening – like not making any trips to the fridge or just sipping chicken broth!  Sometimes there’s just no choice and you just give in and eat – recognizing that you probably will feel like a slug – a very beefy slug – for several days post food frenzy.

You can counter with some activity. It does a lot for your mood and might use up some of those excess calories. Check out the calories you can burn with these winter activities.  These are for a 150 pound person. If you weigh more you’ll burn more calories, if you weigh less you’ll burn fewer calories.

Calories Burned Per Hour With Some Winter Activities

Building a Snowman:   285 calories

• Having a Snowball Fight:   319 calories

• Making Snow Angels:   214 calories

• Snowshoeing:  544 calories

• Shoveling snow:   408 calories

• Baking cookies:  170 calories

• Sledding:  476 calories

• Cross country skiing:  612 calories

Bundle up and go have some fun!  The hot chocolate and cookies will taste even better.

After a very successful year, starting in 2011  SocialDieter  will be “wearing” a brand new look and donning a new name — but keeping the same “attitude.” Our new name will be My foodMAPs, a moniker that better represents our approach to healthy eating and weight management.  For a sneak peak at the new look go to www.MyfoodMAPs.com

For email delivery of MyfoodMAPs  please click here:  http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=MyFoodMaps&loc=en_US

It’s a time of celebration for both you and your pets.

As the big week of celebrations approaches, here are some quick tips to keep your pet family members safe and healthy during the winter holidays.

• If the weather turns nasty and you need to use salt and de-icing materials, remember that they can get into your pet’s paws and onto their stomachs as they climb over snow mounds.  Wipe their paws and tummies with a damp rag.  Antifreeze tastes sweet to dogs and cats so  mop up any spills and bottle drips.

• We find tree ornaments fun to look at and pets absolutely adore them, but metal, glass, ribbons, styrofoam and tinsel can cause serious medical emergencies for your pet.  So can artificial snow and the snow in snow globes.  Ditto for holiday wrappings that get thrown around and fall everywhere.   These can be a hazard for little kids, too.

• We may want our homes to look festive, but ivy, holly, mistletoe, lilies, poinsettia, and some Christmas greens can be toxic to pets if they nibble on them.  Christmas tree water with tree preservative can be attractive to thirsty pets — and harmful, too.

• The holidays are a time to welcome visitors into your home.  Too much activity and too many people can frighten your pets — and sometimes cause them to run away.  Consider putting them in a room away from the roaring crowd and make certain they are wearing  collars with current tags.

• Oh how we love to feast on our holiday treats!  So do our pets. My Golden Retriever, Rufus, was carbo-dog and adored desserts.  Spike, my pug, given his druthers, would eat anything, anytime, anywhere. Some foods can be harmful and cause GI or choking problems. Chocolate that is so prevalent in holiday treats can be quite harmful to our pets.  We truly love out animals, but giving them table scraps is not a good way to show it. And, if you don’t want the leftovers, send them home with visitors or toss them – don’t feed them to the dog — not all of them are healthy for animals.

SocialDieter will be “wearing” a brand new look and offering weight management educational and accountability programs called My foodMAPs (starting in January).  For a sneak peak at the new look, go to www.myfoodMAPs.com.

Have a wonderful, safe, happy, and healthy holiday.

Pound?   Doesn’t it feel like at least seven pounds of weight gain, all of it blubber?

A lot of us start indulging at Thanksgiving (some at Halloween) and don’t stop the free style calorie fest until those onerous New Year’s Resolutions.  Then, because we feel guilty about indulgences, we swear we won’t touch another cookie or piece of cake or candy until we lose massive amounts of weight.

That resolution is doomed to fail because it is unrealistic.  Banning something entirely (unless it is for very specific reasons) equates to deprivation. That almost always leads to you know what: admitting you can’t stand it and chowing down on a box of cookies, half a pie, or three candy bars (definitely super-sized) in a row.

Some Facts

A study of holiday related weight gain published in The New England Journal of Medicine found:

• 85% of the study’s participants made no effort to control their calorie intake
• the average weight gain between Thanksgiving and New Year’s was slightly less than a pound
• participants thought they had gained four times as much
• less than 10% gained five pounds or more
• participants who gained the most weight were more likely to already be overweight or obese

The problem is that most of us don’t lose that extra pound that attaches itself  during the holidays. That means that some of midlife weight gain can be explained by holiday eating.

And, for those of us already overweight, the news is worse. Although the average holiday gain is only one pound, people who are already overweight tend to gain a lot more – one study found five or more pounds during the holidays.

Something To Think About

You need to eat 3,500 extra calories to gain a pound. The average Christmas dinner has about 956 calories. What packs on the weight?

Most of the extra calories don’t come from the “day of” holiday meal but from the nibbling during the holiday season. It’s way too easy to add on 500 extra calories a day which means a pound in a week (7 x 500 = 3500 calories, or 1 pound).

Some Common 500 (around) Calorie Indulgences

•                12 ounces of eggnog

•                1 piece of pecan pie

•                3 ounces of mixed nuts

•                22.5 Hershey’s Kisses

•                Starbucks Venti Peppermint Mocha with whipped cream

•                4 glasses (5oz.) of wine

•                10 regular size candy canes

•                2-3 large Christmas cookies

Some Questions To Ask Yourself

• Do I really want it or does it look good, smell good, or just mean Christmas?
• Is it worth the calories?
• Do I need all of it (or any of it) to be happy?
• What is most important to me?

Answer your questions and decide what you want to do.  Eat mindfully and enjoy.

Happy Holidays!